Belmont's Hydrants Rescued / Colorful characters will be left intact

Published 4:00 am, Friday, November 1, 1996

The gaudy fire plugs that have graced Belmont's streets for 20 years have won a permanent reprieve from bureaucratic paint brushes.

"Belmont's 'happy hydrants' will live on, bright and proud," said Jim McLaughlin, the former Belmont city clerk who came up with the idea of painting the hydrants to celebrate the 1976 Bicentennial.

Belmont residents painted about 390 of the city's hydrants, transforming the drab, utilitarian plugs into bright, fanciful representations of heroes from America's past, such as Paul Revere, Molly Pitcher and John Hancock. But the passing years, combined with a new state law requiring certain colors to be used on fire hydrants, seemed to spell doom for Belmont's "little people."

A storm of protest from the community, and even from elsewhere in the Bay Area, persuaded the Belmont County Water District to hold off on repainting plans. A new agreement between the district and the protesters secures the future of the city's tiny landmarks.

"I think everybody wins with this agreement," said Terry Cook, a city planning commissioner who worked to save the hydrants.

The strong feelings for the hydrants surprised even McLaughlin. He knew that the entire community, young and old, had gotten together to paint the hydrants 20 years ago, but he wasn't sure that same feeling had survived the changes that two decades had brought to Belmont.

"It's easy to take something for granted when you see it every day," he said.

But when word spread about the threat to the Bicentennial hydrants, protests roared in from everywhere.

Newspapers and television crews came to Belmont to tell the story of the hydrants, a College of San Mateo film crew recorded them for a video archive, and letters flooded into the city.

"We even got calls from people in other cities who had helped paint the hydrants when they were young," McLaughlin said. "They wanted to come back with their own children to repaint them."

It was a dilemma for the water district. While the district had even provided paint to retouch about 100 of the hydrants five years ago, the new state law was clear.

The law was passed after the 1991 Oakland hills fire, when out-of-town firefighters hastily called to the blaze could not tell how much water was available from the various hydrants in the area. The state now requires that the tops of hydrants be painted light blue, green, orange or red, depending on their capacity.

The state also wanted the body of the fire plugs to be coated with reflective paint to make them easier to see at night, but left the final decision on the color to local officials.

That bit of discretion left the door open for a compromise that saved the folk art hydrants.

"The district agreed that they would just paint the caps of the hydrants, which is all that's required," McLaughlin said. "That won't interfere with the artwork on the rest of the hydrant."

McLaughlin and other members of his Save the Hydrant Committee now plan a complete inventory of the decorated fire plugs, which are spread throughout the city. Once they determine what needs to be done to each of them, the repainting can begin, probably beginning this spring.

"We hope to get them all repainted, but especially the ones on our main streets, such as Ralston and El Camino," he said.

The Chamber of Commerce gets about two or three calls a week from people who want to know where they can see the hydrants, McLaughlin said.

More than 40 people have already promised to refurbish the hydrants, and others have said they're interested.

The story of Belmont's Bicentennial hydrants is one with no losers, said Doug Short, general manager of the water district.

"I glad to see a dispute where everyone walks away happy," he said.

For McLaughlin, however, the whole episode is just another example of the strength of community spirit.

"The people here thought they had something unique and wonderful," he said. "(They) were not willing to see those hydrants disappear."